Hello,
Short on Time? Essential Links
Survey of 1,600+ international students in US & UK universities | Source: INTO, January 2026
The INTO Survey: 96% of International Students Say AI Beats Traditional Search
INTO conducted a landmark survey of 1,600+ international students enrolled in US and UK universities in January 2026. The headline is striking: 96% of students who used AI rated it equal to or superior to traditional information sources like websites, rankings databases, and search engines.
This finding has profound implications for your institution's admissions funnel. Students are no longer navigating your website directly—they're asking AI systems about your programs, and AI is becoming their primary source of truth.
What students are searching for through AI:
- University rankings & reputation: 61%
- Program/course details: 39%
- Career outcomes: 34%
- Student life: 34%
Regional adoption varies dramatically. South Korea leads at 30%, followed by Philippines (28%), Vietnam and Japan (25% each). The global average sits at just 17%—meaning adoption is concentrated in specific geographies and growing rapidly in Asia-Pacific regions.
What this means for your institution: Traditional website architecture designed for human browsing is increasingly inadequate for AI agents. If ChatGPT or Claude cannot parse your program information, international students will get incomplete or inaccurate answers. Your admissions funnel is now competing with AI systems.
Action Item: Audit how AI systems interpret your institution's web content. Test with Claude and ChatGPT. Ask: Can the AI find program requirements? Tuition? Career outcomes? If not, fix it now. Screenshot the results and bring them to your web team this week.
The $3 Trillion Data Center Boom: Debt Markets Signal Confidence—or Panic
Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan project $20 billion to $150 billion in AI-related leveraged finance deals in 2026. Moody's estimates $3 trillion in global data center investment over the next five years. The six largest U.S. hyperscalers (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle, Apple) are on track to spend $500+ billion on infrastructure in 2026 alone.
This creates a structural problem: AI infrastructure spending is now so large that it's reshaping debt markets. Companies are issuing record amounts of debt to fund data centers. This works as long as AI ROI remains positive.
If returns disappoint, debt markets could seize up and your cloud vendors' pricing could rise sharply to service their debt obligations.
Institutional strategy: Lock in multi-year cloud commitments with favorable terms now, while vendors are competitive. Do not assume prices will remain flat. Renegotiate your Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud contracts before mid-year.
Google Engineer Guilty: AI Trade Secrets and Institutional Risk
Former Google engineer Linwei Ding was convicted of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft. Ding stole thousands of pages of confidential Google AI documents and transmitted them to benefit Chinese companies. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
This is a watershed moment for AI security. It's no longer theoretical—AI models and training data are now targets of state-level espionage. If your institution develops proprietary AI models or datasets, you are a target too.
Your IT and research leadership need to act immediately:
- Classify AI models and datasets as trade secrets with appropriate legal protections
- Restrict access to confidential AI work to need-to-know personnel only
- Screen foreign national researchers for potential conflicts of interest
- Update your export control compliance to account for AI models and algorithms
- Brief faculty on what constitutes unclassified research vs. controlled technology
This is not paranoia. This is baseline institutional security in 2026.
Cisco AI Summit Today: Building AI at Scale
Today, February 3, Cisco is hosting its second annual AI Summit with speakers from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and other AI leaders. The focus: how to build and govern AI at a global scale.
If you have time this afternoon, watch the livestream. Pay close attention to how enterprise leaders discuss governance, risk, and cost management. These conversations are directly applicable to your institution's AI roadmap and decision-making.
Try something new today
Test your website with AI — Open ChatGPT or Claude and ask: "I'm an international student interested in [your program]. Can you summarize tuition, program requirements, and career outcomes from [your university] website?"
Observe what the AI returns. If it's incomplete or inaccurate, your admissions funnel has a problem. Screenshot the results and bring them to your web team immediately.
A Final Reflection for Today
February 3 presents a clear picture: AI is now central to student recruitment, infrastructure spending is at unprecedented scale, and security risks are real and prosecutable. Your institution cannot ignore any of these trends.
The institutions winning in 2026 are taking AI seriously at every level: admissions, academic planning, security, and governance. Start with the audit of your web content. That's the immediate action. Everything else follows.
HigherEd AI Daily
Curated for educators integrating artificial intelligence into teaching and institutional strategy.
Questions? Contact askthephd@higheredai.dev